The architects of Krombittraksorm (Yaroslavl) and Arkh-INN (Nizhniy Novgorod) had transformed the remnants of the production facility into truly fantastic installations: one reminiscent of a house of cards, another resembling the Bear of Yaroslavl in a truly unexpected way. The machine shops also exhibited the work of photographers Pyotr Lovygin, Andrei Kremnev, and Vera Shkarina of Yaroslavl, Marie Augustine of Paris, and Mieke Woestenburg of Amsterdam. These different ways of understanding the production space made the entire complex seem more vivid and alive.    Visitors to the factory on that day were not merely spectators, but also participants in a laboratory. In this atmosphere of photography, dance, theatre, and design, absolutely nobody was shy or left out. But the majority came to see Natalya Vishnevskaya, the language arts teacher from NTC. The Russians learned French and the French learned Russian, all feeling an endless pleasure at the pronunciation of their newly learned phrases.    In the freight bay, as spools of cloth and fabric were still being loaded and unloaded, an auditorium was created. Settling around the room on wooden boxes, the audience was treated to videos on a large screen and a series of poetry readings. A duet on violin and flute soon lead to improvisational performances on a dance floor created in the loading area.  

Performers from La Barak a Theatre, the Yaroslavl Theatre of the Young Spectator, and lift.dvizhenie also collaborated on a presentation. The weavers present were impressed and deeply moved. A holiday had come to their workshops and with news of that which lay deep inside each of them. Ivan Vyrypaev’s play, Oxygen, was recalled by all those artists who, coming to visit the factory, instantly felt how difficult it was to breath in that space.
X years before the factory had been used for a similar intercultural dialogue between the Russian population and guests from Holland.  On this great occasion it was important to note how successfully the industrial territory was being redeveloped. We also wanted to express our gratitude to the workers and management of the Krasnyi Perekop, and especially to Pyotr Alexeevich Shelkoshvein, for the opportunity to carry out this sort of project in Yaroslavl – not to mention